Drought puts a damper on Cupertino High School fireworks

July 4, 2015

Updated July 5, 2015 10:19 a.m.

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The entrance to a field at Cupertino High School in Cupertino, on June 30. In a harbinger of California's new reckoning with drought, Cupertino has canceled its annual Fourth of July fireworks extravaganza held here rather than use some 100,000 gallons of water to protect the school's artificial turf fields. JIM WILSON , THE NEW YORK TIMES

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The girls' field hockey team practices at Cupertino High School in Cupertino on June 30. In a harbinger of California's new reckoning with drought, Cupertino has canceled its annual Fourth of July fireworks extravaganza held here rather than use some 100,000 gallons of water to protect the school's artificial turf fields. JIM WILSON , THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Mayor Rod Sinks of Cupertino, which has called off its traditional fireworks display due to the ongoing drought on June 30. The city determined that some 100,000 gallons of water would be required to protect fields at the fireworks site. “We have to act as if its really going to happen,” Sinks said of accommodating more arid conditions. “This may be the new normal.” JIM WILSON , THE NEW YORK TIMES

The entrance to a field at Cupertino High School in Cupertino, on June 30. In a harbinger of California's new reckoning with drought, Cupertino has canceled its annual Fourth of July fireworks extravaganza held here rather than use some 100,000 gallons of water to protect the school's artificial turf fields. JIM WILSON , THE NEW YORK TIMES

CUPERTINO – The annual Fourth of July fireworks extravaganza here has survived municipal economic crises and fire marshal warnings about exploding shells over this hot and dry landlocked community. But this year, patriotism might have finally met its match: the California drought.

The much revered $75,000 show over Cupertino High School will not go on Saturday night, as school district and City Hall officials, after some anguished debate, said they could not justify gushing a small river of water to protect the school’s artificial turf fields in a year when the state has imposed a mandatory 25 percent cut in urban water use.

“We figured we’d be dumping 100,000 gallons of water in the span of two hours for those fireworks,” said Rick Kitson, public affairs director for Cupertino. “Everyone felt very uncomfortable about that. That seemed to be not quite defensible.”

“Adding insult to injury,” he said, “it was all perfectly drinkable.”

In one sense, Cupertino - home to the Apple world headquarters (the current campus as well as the 2.8 million-square-foot spaceship under construction) - is something of an outlier. Even in this time of record drought and ominous wildfire alerts, California communities, particularly those that have the option of shooting their displays over bodies of water, are proceeding with their fireworks. Instead, they are focused on cracking down more aggressively on what officials describe as a surge of amateur illegal fireworks use, which is seen as a greater fire risk.

Still, the decision here was clearly not easy - the mayor, Rod G. Sinks, joked darkly that he was going to be remembered as the mayor who killed the fireworks - and is the latest way California is grappling with what many officials here see as a new era, signified by less water and the heightened risk of fire.

“With all the climate change, we are looking at continuing drought,” said Sinks, sitting in his City Hall office on yet another hot and dry afternoon. “I believe we are heading for a more arid climate here. We have to act as if it’s really going to happen. This may be the new normal.”

Cupertino, he added, is “as patriotic as the next community” and has “sustained fireworks when others didn’t,” most notably during the dot-com collapse of the turn of the century. But, Sinks added, “there’s a symbol here.”

What happened here may well be a sign of things to come if the drought continues. In Cambria, a community 200 miles to the south along the coast, fire officials canceled the fireworks show after citing the potential of a fire disaster posed by an old growth of dry and dying Monterey pine trees that frame the village.

“I received the application to do the fireworks show, and it just didn’t make any sense at all,” said Mark Miller, the Cambria fire chief. “There’s no way we could justify having fireworks. This is a cute little town with a big ugly fire problem right now.”

Cupertino is in many ways a model California city when it comes to responding to the drought. Parks and lawns across this community are brown, and that is considered a mark of progress here these days. The only remnant left of the bubbling fountain where children once frolicked in front of City Hall is a photograph behind the mayor’s desk; the city turned the fountain off long ago.

Apple is using recycled water, shipped in from nearby Sunnyvale, to supply its new campus. Cupertino High School began years ago to replace natural fields with artificial turf. San Jose Water Co., one of two water companies that supply this community, posted a 36 percent cut in water usage in May over two years ago, one of the highest savings in the state, the State Water Resources Control Board reported this week.

In the scheme of things, the amount of water being saved by canceling the fireworks is not huge. And there is some dispute as to how necessary this is, certainly from a fire-control perspective. Jeff Thomas, the show producer at Pyro Spectaculars by Souza, which stages the extravaganza here and in 2,000 other communities, said Cupertino was the company’s only California client to cancel.

“We have shows all over the state,” Thomas said. "I have not heard of any major issues. And we’ve had droughts before in California.

Some of the biggest concerns they have are about wildfires - “We’ve been pretty successful in not starting fires,” he said.

Of Cupertino, Thomas said, “They have to do what they have to do; it’s unfortunate.”

Jackie Bretschneider, the fire marshal of Gilroy, a community 40 miles south of here where the fireworks show will proceed as planned, said that although she understood Cupertino’s water-saving motivation, she preferred that communities sponsor fireworks as a way of discouraging the illegal and more dangerous amateur fireworks that she called epidemic.

“When you are talking about professional fireworks shows, the areas they are doing them in are the same areas whether there is a drought or not,” she said.

Fire officials in Santa Clara County and other parts of the state were devoting their energies to thwarting illegal fireworks activity. “You have everybody and their families using highly explosive devices that fly through the air and explode,” Bretschneider said. “In a drought, that is even more of an issue.”

Fire risk has been a long-standing concern here, where the high school is surrounded by quiet blocks of handsome homes. Fire officials have tried in the past to limit potential damage by requiring Pyro to use smaller shells that do not rise as high, but worry remains.

“We don’t like having embers pouring into somebody’s backyard,” said John Justice, deputy chief of fire prevention with the Santa Clara County Fire Department, which covers this community. “We just don’t like that.”

“Vegetation here in California is very stressed,” he said. “Our fire season has essentially gone from May to October to the point of being year-round.”

There will be other celebrations of the holiday here Saturday - non-incendiary ones, including a parade in which the mayor will dress up in an Uncle Sam costume - but school officials said fireworks had long been the most popular and treasured part of the day.

“It’s been a priority for the community,” said Polly M. Bove, the superintendent of schools for the Fremont Union High School District, which includes Cupertino. “We are lucky that there are some very large shows not too far away.”

At City Hall, Kitson said officials had expected “a certain amount of controversy.”

“It’s a fun event,” he added. “I bring my own family to it every year.”

“But we have not received a single complaint,” he said. “I hate to tell you that because now we are going to be inundated.”

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